Lenovo ThinkPad T480s

[quququbebebe]

For anyone who need it :

https://tojaj.com/lenovo-biosuefi-update-from-usb-stick-i-e-without-bootable-cd/

Archive Link

I will try it soon

[quququbebebe]

@icequbes1

I find this topic overlooked given that Qubes relies on hardware isolation, but please update your BIOS if your manufacturer provides updates.

I just did it thank you again for noticing that

@qubicrm

using geteltorito, and then flash the resulting file to a USB thumb drive

@qubicrm

Later, remember you must boot in UEFI mode (sometimes qubes is installed in BIOS mode).

Thanks you for the recommandation and it did work like a charm

[icequbes1]

@quququbebebe

hahah it what happen when I tried a long time ago, I though i was doing something wrong and was stupid to not be able to just boot one little .ISO hahah and I just gave up

That’s sort of the kick - the “little” ISOs aren’t typically constructed in a way that makes them bootable everywhere, even if directly copied as a disk image. A bootable ISO is already a bit of magic if you look into the spec.

[icequbes1]

@quququbebebe

I just did it thank you again for noticing that

And no problem, upgrading the BIOS is often overlooked even for “linux” folk. I only took note of your BIOS version since there was a recent Intel advisory that sparked some BIOS updates for various OEMs.

[montgomery]

Hi,

thanks for the HCL report, and all the above information.

I am planning to buy a t480s since mid 2019 but this issue is still open and I think it has a significant performance impact on the t480s. It is might connected to the issue described here, which has a solution for non-qubes linux here.

The discussion in the github topic indicates that some progress was made in 4.1 but my understanding is that it is still open.

Could you please share your experience regarding performance under high load, battery life, CPU temperature, and other relevant topics? I would highly appreciate it.

Thanks!
Montgomery

[Amadeus65]

@quququbebebe

Hi Thanks for all your information and details on the T480s.
I need to ask you a few questions.

1st about me:
I am new to QUBES OS and need to learn a lot.
I dumped Ms Windows in 2016 and since 2016 I do use openSUSE Tumbleweed + KDE desktop as my daily driver. I am a fan of the KDE desktop.

2nd My little QUBES OS experience (=zero experience).
I recently installed QUBES 4.0 (stable) on an older T460s i7 6600U with 20GB RAM and after installation it worked “out of the box”. My first impression was good one I didn’t have enough time to look in to QUBES OS jet, but found that updating after install took a long time. Futhrtmore I don’t really like the XFCE desktop (I don’t have much experience with this desktop environment).
I will start digging in to QUBES OS within a day or 10 on another Laptop. Especially for QUBES OS I bought a T480s / i5 8350U / 24GB RAM / 500GB SSD and 512 GB 2nd SSD (in WiWAN slot).

I do understand that running QUBES OS requires more system resources and more RAM then usual on Linux.
I will install QUBES OS coming Tuesday on my T480s / i5 8350U / 24GB RAM and start exploring.

You do have 40GB RAM installed. My questions are.
-Do we really need 40GB RAM?
-Is 24GB RAM not sufficient?
Of course the amount of RAM depends on the way QUBES OS is going to be used.

I would prefer to run the T480s on QUBES OS as my office and private laptop.
I also prefer to run the Linux distro that I like most as a daily driver. This is openSUSE Tumbleweed + KDE within a “qube” VM.
But Debian + KDE within a “qube” VM. would also be OK for me.
Fedora + KDE within a “qube” VM. I never tried but I expect Fedora + KDE would be OK too.
Next to that and only for reasons of convenience I would like to have a VM running Ms Windows (I have two clients running windows networks in their offices and their ICT depts. are more or less forcing me to use widows (which I rather not use).

I read KDE desktop on QUBES 4.1 is possible. So I will give that a try.
I really look forward to start with QUBES OS 4.1.

Looking forward to your answer on the RAM subject etc.
Maybe you do have some guiding advice for me as a QUBES OS novice.

Thanks!

[fsflover]

@Amadeus65

-Is 24GB RAM not sufficient?

16 was not enough for me, but 32 seems to be fine. Running 10+ qubes. See also: Is 4GB of RAM enought for running Qubes OS?.

@Amadeus65

Maybe you do have some guiding advice for me as a QUBES OS novice.

Reading documentation is really essential for a good experience with Qubes. Also, ask here if you have any problems (create a new topic).

[Amadeus65]

@fsflover,

Thanks a lot! This gave me some insight. As far as I can foresee for me it will not be more than 5+ Qubes maximum. I may presume 24GB of RAM should be enough.

Thanks for the links you did provide. I do always read documentation before I start to install a new OS and will continue to read according to your recommendation.

I ordered a T480s i5 8350U with 8GB soldered on the Board and a soDIMM of 32GB. That should ad up to 40GB RAM.

But today instead of the T480s a T490s with 8GB RAM soldered on the motherboard was delivered. This I will sent the T490s back because on a T490s I can´t upgrade the RAM there is no slot (very bad idea of Lenovo). T480s is a nice system but useless as a QUBES OS system.

So for now I will proceed on the T460s with 24GB RAM, and re-install QUBES OS tomorrow. The I7 6600U is still a nice CPU altough only 2 core.
The T480s will follow when it will be delivered.

I was looking around for instructions to replace the XFCE desktop for a KDE any tips & tricks?

Don´t want to hijack this thread so if this is to much of topic please move my question to the right thread.

Thanks

[fsflover]

@Amadeus65

I was looking around for instructions to replace the XFCE desktop for a KDE any tips & tricks?

KDE - changing the way you use Qubes

I think KDE is a great match for Qubes, and makes the whole user experience better. KDE has a simple menu editor, that helps you to focus on the important things - grouping qubes, ordering shortcuts, and so on. There are simple tools to control (and master) many windows from multiple qubes, and to quickly get to the window you want. You can also use Activities - a way of making each desktop a separate workspace, with its own wallpaper, widgets and launchers. You can force windows from pa…

[quququbebebe]

@Sven

|Max. memory|20/24GB (4/8GB + 1 slot)

It’s not 24GB but 40GB as I have myself 40GB of ram memory

[Sven]

@quququbebebe

It’s not 24GB but 40GB as I have myself 40GB of ram memory

How? I took the info from the platform spec.

Are you sure you got a T480s? How many slots do you have and what’s in it?

[unman]

How? I took the info from the platform spec.

It’s definitely 40GB - if you have 8GB soldered you can add a 32GB module.

The manufacturer wont update their specs as RAM improves and becomes
cheaper.
Also, sometimes they will only report results which were tested with the
original installed OS.
It’s therefore common for the “real” maximum to be far in excess of the
manufacturer’s report.

[Sven]

Thank you @quququbebebe and @unman, I’ve made the respective edits.

[fsflover]

I found that T480s has suspend, USB and brightness issues. Are you sure it belongs to the list?

[Sven]

@fsflover wrote:

I found that T480s has suspend, USB and brightness issues. Are you sure it belongs to the list?
From the report:

can’t suspend the system, it will crash when waking up. The solution I found, was to disable the 2nd usb controller on sys-usb (3.0 xHCI Controler)

I don’t see a USB issue here other then with suspend. So if the 2nd USB controller is enabled suspend is not working, if it’s disabled suspend works.

Consider the brightness value from 0 to 11, with 0 as a black screen and 11 the maximum brightness. I can’t access brightness 1 naturally. I must go all the way up to 11, then go down to 1. An other consequence of this issue, is the popup showing the current brightness having some visual issues.

That’s exactly the kind of minor issue that doesn’t stop productive use of the computer. That’s why the criteria list and not a general “everything works, no problems”.

So, yes … in my opinion that computer belongs on the list.

[Amadeus65]

@Sven

As also @quququbebe & @unman did post, 40GB RAM in Thinkpad T480s is not a problem at all.

The Lenovo PSREF are outdated and we have found this to be the case with other ThinkPads before (Like the T450s the last one with DDR3 RAM).

I bought a ThinkPad T480s with Intel i5 8350U CPU. At first a crappy T490s was delivered, crappy because RAM isn’t upgradable in a T490s. Now finally the correct T480s was delivered and I installed the 32GB RAM module & QUBES OS 4.1.0-RC3.

Installation of QUBES OS was easy. It took <20 minutes. That’s a huge improvement of >40 minutes compared the ThinkPad T460s that sports 20GB RAM.

I have chosen the i5 8350 CPU (4 cores 8 lanes) on the ThinPad T480s platform very consciously. The heat development under load in the i7 8550U and the i7 8650U on Linux is on the high side. This i5 8350U CPU also scores better in various benchmarks than the two 8th generation i7 CPU’s I mentioned before do (the i7 8650U I know of my ThinkPad X1). This is despite the lower 6GB CPU cache compared to the 8GB CPU cache in the i7 CPUs

Installation of Qubes OS was simple and done in >20 minutes. That is a huge improvement of >40 minutes compared to the installation time needed on ThinkPad T460s. On that T460s i7 6600U (2 cores 4 lanes) with 20GB RAM installation of QUBES OS took me more than an hour.

As written earlier here I am new to Qubes OS and need to study this OS and learn. The hardware platform of the ThinkPad T480s seems very suitable, partly due to the RAM upgrade.

I posted this just FYI.

Hope it’s useful information to the forum members.

[fsflover]

Thank you @Amadeus65. Could confirm that suspend does (not) work on your machine? Could you also share an HCL report?

[HPOA909]

Qubes-HCL-LENOVO-20L70028US-20211220-175053.yml (805 Bytes)
This is my submission for the HCL report

[Sven]

Thank you @HPOA909 for your HCL report, which is now online.

[HPOA909]

ThanQ